The Scalphunters

• Directed by Sydney Pollack
• April 2, 1968

Forced by Kiowa to trade his furs for a well-educated escaped slave, a trapper seeks to recover the hides from those Kiowa and later the people that killed them.

They just do not make them like this anymore-a lotta fun with enough serious that you are concerned about the characters with a message that gets past your biases because the film puts story first. The Scalphunters is certainly not a serious Western but rather a Western comedy. There are no hard laughs but plenty of chuckles in every scene. Jokes come steadily. The most surprising aspect is that those jokes are still funny 56 years later.

Based on the opening moments, I could’ve watched a movie with just Burt Lancaster and Ozzie Davis playing off of each other, but we got more than that. Burt Lancaster as trapper Joe Bass and Ossie Davis as educated runaway slave Joseph Lee are great together. There is a certain amount of humorous feeling each other out.

Joe Bass is an experienced outdoorsman who knows the land and what it can provide. Cynical and bigoted, he is not above swindles and counter swindles. Joseph Lee is a sly runaway slave that is a bit of a conman who pretends to be Comanche when it is soon clear he knows nothing to fake it but is smart enough to play on general bigotry. His whole focus is trying to slip away to Mexico. Davis delivers some pretty outlandish lines but smoothly sells the bullcrap he is slinging so that you can believe the characters believe it.

Telly Savalas as Jim Howie leads the titular scalphunters who scalp any Indians they find to collect an official bounty from the US government. He’s paired with a former prostitute named Kate (Shelley Winters) who is far from the life she wanted or thought she would have by hooking up with him. They banter like an old married couple. Not as good as Davis and Lancaster but entertaining still.

Despite being a murderer weirdly Jim Howie never comes off as terribly evil. He and his people killed a whole bunch of Kiowa and then ransacked their corpses and belongings yet they are not sinister or dark. And in fact Howie demonstrates a bit of fairness when it comes to Joseph Lee who’s been essentially planted by Joe Bass into the group. Admittedly it is because as a living slave Joseph Lee is worth something, but it is clear he does not hold how the other man is acting in the altercation in high regard.

The thrust of the story is Joe Bass chasing after the pelts that were strong armed from him Two Crows (Armando Silvestre) and his men and then pillaged from the dead Kiowa. It’s an often comedic game of cat and mouse begun with some hilarious *sarcasm* mindless slaughter. All the main characters have an angle of one type or another. And each one having their own angle provides much comedy. Their greed and at points ineptitude causes many of their own problems.

There are moments where The Scalphunters takes a very serious turn and then it goes right back into comedy. Some of that connects to instances of bigotry while others to the growing murderous need for revenge on the part of Howie and his men who despite even that never feels irredeemably evil. Yet those moments are not consistent.

The dialogue is witty with the characters coming off as memorable and intelligent. The script is clever and never feels predictable. Director Sydney Pollack and writer William W. Norton gave us a Western gem that is more fun than anything else.

Despite being maybe a little uneven, The Scalphunters is a funny and entertaining Western with a very talented cast. There is action and humor and enough to keep you enjoying from start to finish. Certainly a must see for viewers of comedy and Westerns!